


Occasions for Hope

by thelonebamf



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Canon character deaths, Character Study, F/M, Implied Relationships, M/M, Suicide mention, i can't believe there's not a tag for huey and his canon wife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 16:42:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8924497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelonebamf/pseuds/thelonebamf
Summary: A brief character study of father and son. How the two are similar and how they are very, very different.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LotusRox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LotusRox/gifts).



**/Work**

 

“We appreciate you traveling all this way, Dr. Emmerich but-”

 

“If you’d just allow me to finish-”

 

“I think we’ve heard enough, Doctor.” The man stood, metal legs of his chair making and awful sound against the cold tile. “We’ll get back to you.”

 

He wasn’t a stupid man. He knew what that meant. He wheeled his chair from the front of the room, just in front of the door. Not exactly a barricade, but it would buy him a few more seconds.

 

“I assure you, this is the only viable method! Relations with Russia have only become more strained in the last decade and unless we take action to protect ourselves-”

 

“Dr. Emmerich!”

 

The room sat silent and still, even the harried scientist was too shocked to continue.

 

“Simply put- you want the United States government to fund this contraption for d-deter…”

 

“Deterrence.”

 

“Deterrence. Which, if I understand you correctly, means you want to spend a whole lot of taxpayer money to build something with no intention of ever using it. I just don’t see that going over too well with the boys in Washington.”

 

“But that’s the entire point! Don’t you understand? If you build a perfect weapon, you won’t need to use it!”

 

“Oh I understand just fine, Doctor. But if you’re talking about putting the greatest military strength the world has ever seen out of a job, then I’m afraid the answer is a firm ‘no’. Good day.”

 

“Good day.”

 

The men filed out of the auditorium, some still deigning to give a nod of the head to the man whose words they’d chosen to ignore.

 

No matter.

 

These were small and petty men, more interested in secure deposits to their various offshore accounts than a secure future for the world.

 

His designs were flawless, his data correct, he just needed a push to bring his plans to fruition. These were not the only men worth speaking to. Somewhere out there was someone who would listen. And if they would listen he could change their mind. There was hope yet.

 

* * *

 

 

Hal threw his bag onto his bed, seemingly heedless of its tumble to the ground- a dull thud as his books and binders made contact with the floor. He flung himself onto the mattress with an equal lack of care, not so much as flinching as his glasses pushed harshly into the bridge of his nose.

 

It was too much. That had been the point of course, to bury himself in his coursework, force himself to focus purely on academics. Programs and machines, they all followed a firm logic and the answers were all there in the pages of his textbooks for him to find, assuming he studied them closely enough. Nothing was truly hidden or concealed.

 

No secrets.

 

Of course the flaw in his brilliant plan was that neither his projects nor his advisors cared at all for the _reasons_ Hal had chosen to charge ahead with his work, pursuing a PhD at an absurdly young age as though dropping out of high school had been a fluke. Boy genius or not, the work still had to be done. And while Hal definitely had a talent for science, it didn’t mean the answers showed up on his monitor with nothing more than a wave of his hand.

 

He barely ate. Slept only when his body gave out, only to wake some hours later, still at his desk as brightly colored pipes wormed their way across his monitor in random configurations.

 

He’d wipe the sleep from his eyes, adjust his glasses until the code in front of him started to make sense, and begin his work again.

 

Sometimes, he thought it might be the only thing he was any good at.

 

Sometimes he wanted it to be over.

 

Sometimes he wanted it _all_ to be over.

 

But he kept at it, kept pushing himself, kept moving forward. Each word of praise from an instructor a small treasure. Every criticism a lesson learned.

 

Hal was determined to keep learning. As long as he kept learning, he could change. And if he could keep changing…

 

There was still hope.

* * *

 

**//Love**

 

“Dammit Huey! Open it now!”

 

“Please…”

 

“Let me out!”

 

The pounding of frantic hands on metal echoed throughout the warehouse turned workshop, stark and hollow.

 

But not empty.

 

Dr. Emmerich - alas, “Huey” no more, took a step back from the mammal pod, silently willing the cries to die down. This woman, the mother of his child, _his_ child, had admitted to kidnapping him, sending him away without so much as consulting him, as though his opinion didn’t matter. It was infuriating. Incomprehensible.

 

He just needed time to _think._

 

There had to be some way to convince her to see reason. It wasn’t as though she was stupid. How could she be? He’d been attracted to her after all, and certainly not on the basis of her ‘womanly charms’.

 

No, he’d seen her as an equal, a challenge, perhaps, but not one he couldn’t surmount.

 

But what she’d done- sabotaged his work like this in a single blow… he might never recover.

 

He needed to figure out a plan, a way to recover his son, or at least the data they’d worked so hard to produce. There was no time to lose.

 

He just wished she would be _quiet._

 

And then, she was.

 

He didn’t think back to that moment when the silence of the warehouse became absolute. He didn’t linger on it that night as he poured himself a cup of instant coffee. He didn’t bother remembering when Snake had brought him to Mother Base to continue his research. And aside from that unpleasant incident that led to his “dismissal” he had no reason to be reminded of it at all.

 

But here and now, at this dinner party at the home of some colleague who had begged him to regale the gathered company with stories of the vicious and bloodthirsty Diamond Dogs, he had cause to recall it once again.

 

 _“_ So dreadful, I can hardly imagine what it must have been like. And for you to come so far and continue your work, it’s so admirable. That you can even speak of your capture,” the woman speaking to him was young, a lithe and beautiful creature. She leaned forward, a hand placed on his knee, eyes full of sympathy.

 

“It was,” he agreed. “But in the end, I managed to save what mattered. My life. My work.” He smiled at her, satisfied when it was returned.

 

“And your wife. Another tragedy! Leaving you and your son, when he was still so young.”

 

“Yes. Yes, Hal. It’s a shame that his mother didn’t get to see him grow up into the fine young man he is today. But we Emmerich men seemed to manage fine on our own.” A single hand on top of hers, a cautious stroke of the thumb.

 

“To be honest, Ms. Danziger, I’m not sure it wasn’t for the best. I’m not sure Hal’s mother ever really loved me.”

 

“You’re joking, surely!”

 

“Don’t look so surprised!” A brief smile, habitual push of his glasses. “Not everyone is quite so kind-hearted as yourself. And she was…”

 

Words were important here.

 

“Brilliant, and passionate. Perhaps we were too similar in that. At the time, I thought that was all it took to make a relationship work.”

 

He leaned forward, pleased at the blush growing on her soft cheeks as he peered at her from over the edges of his frames.

 

“I know better now.”

 

* * *

 

“I never apologized.”

 

“Hm? Sorry?”

 

It was just like Hal, to apologize to the very person who was trying to make amends for their own transgressions, but the lateness of the hour, combined with the pleasant buzz of the night’s drinks meant he was less that careful with his words. Not that he was particularly judicious with them to begin with.

 

And on nights like these, as the television lit the room with its sickly glow, and rain spattered against the windowpanes, threatening to turn to sleet or possibly snow, the words came easily. Usually from him.

 

And sometimes, from Dave.

 

Hal turned his body as much as he could, which really meant he adjusted the direction in which he was leaning, one shoulder pressing deep into the back of the sofa as he looked up at his friend. He’d learned long ago to read Dave’s various kinds of silence. Sometimes he needed a good prodding to say what was on his mind. Other times it was up to Hal to create a distraction that led Dave to revealing secret truths.

 

But tonight Hal could tell it was best to wait and let the silence coax out whatever discussion Dave wanted to have.

 

It took another commercial break and few sips of beer before Dave spoke again, but this time Hal was ready.

 

“It was hard to forget back in Alaska, every time it snowed at night- which was all the damn time…”

 

“...Even out here, nights like this, I get to thinking.”

 

Hal remained absolutely still.

 

“I’ve killed a lot of people. Not even worth trying to imagine a number. Some of them might have deserved it more than others but-”

 

He stopped and growled softly, raising the empty can to his lips and it looked like he might abandon the topic altogether. Hal was about to speak up with some mindless non sequitur about the weather or the show they’d stopped watching, anything to clear the air.

 

“...her death was the only one where after I felt like I owed someone… owed _you_ …”

 

The words hung in the air unspoken, but Hal had begged forgiveness often enough to recognize someone doing their best to ask for it. He took a deep breath before letting himself sag tiredly against Dave’s side. Another minute or two passed before himself out well enough to speak.

 

“She never really loved me,” he said. Out loud. And for the first time.

 

“Hal-”

 

“No, it’s… it’s okay. Really.” Hal smiled softly despite the ache in his chest and stomach. “I couldn’t see things clearly back then, between the stress and the fear and realizing what I’d created… I think I just wanted, maybe even needed, someone to connect with. And Wolf- she was…” He hissed faintly between his teeth. “She was something. Everything. Everything I wasn’t. And yet there was some faint trace of… kindness? Empathy, maybe. Too easily taken for something more.”

 

It was Dave’s turn to wait as Hal’s hand slipped into his own, slotting their fingers together.

 

“I thought that was love. One sided, maybe. I don’t think I dared to imagine it was anything else.”

 

He looked up at Dave, his eyes resolute on the the television, teeth and tongue whispering over the edge of his bottom lip, indicating the need for a cigarette. He remembered the other nights like this, the bleary eyed and headache filled mornings after, bottles of aspirin passed wordlessly between them as the day’s first pot of coffee brewed.

 

“I know better now.”

* * *

 

**///In the End**

 

Once again it was a woman who dared to take his son from him. Perhaps that was just the nature of all women, to be grasping and needy with clawing hands, thoughtlessly stealing away everything he’d worked so hard for.

 

His chair turned a sharp corner, knocking into the kitchen table hard enough to shake it and send a glass of water tumbling to the floor. The motorized wheels crunched over the shards of glass, grinding them deeper into the grain of the wooden floor. Someone else’s problem.

 

He was not a stupid man. He knew that there was no way of undoing the damage his wife had done- to his son, to his family, to say nothing of himself.

 

And what could he say? Confronted by his colleagues and coworkers, all making idle chatter, endless repetitions of “Sure it a hot day” and “How’s the family?”.

 

Did she mean to make a _liar_ out of him?

 

Julie may have sunk her hooks into Hal, found him vulnerable, weakened by his mother’s abandonment, but if he could not reverse the hurtful choices of those around him, he could at least teach them a lesson. There was always the future to think about.

 

Emma was sitting at the kitchen table, bare feet swinging beneath her seat as she worked fastidiously on a drawing of a fantastic sea creature of her own design. She hummed a song quietly to herself, something vaguely recognizable as the theme song to one of the shows her step-brother wasted his time with. The poor child hardly realized the influence he had on her. Perhaps it was too late, and she too was tainted by the corruption poisoning this family he’d worked so hard to build.

 

She turned at the feeling of a hand on her shoulder, confusion quickly melting away into a pleased grin at the sight of the man she’d only just started to call ‘dad’.

 

“Emma,” he said quietly, voice even and calm. “Why don’t you go get your swimsuit?”

 

Her eyes lit up in excitement at the prospect of an afternoon in the pool. Swimming was one of her favorite hobbies, but the family had firm rules about getting into the water without a grown-up around.

 

He looked down at her with a smile, stiff and fragile as he patted her back to usher her along.

  
“It’s so nice outside. Good day for a swim.”

  


* * *

 

Hal pulled the door closed quietly behind him, turning the handle half way as he eased it shut. The mug in his hand was mostly empty, small plate bare aside from the core of an apple. Dave had finally given up on refusing what he called Hal’s “incessant mother-henning”. Hal just thought of it as giving a damn.

 

In either case, it meant Dave was now accepting Hal’s offers to bring him coffee when the temperature dropped, hardly fussing when a lumpy pile of extra blankets were dumped on the bed.

 

He was resting now, snoring soundly beneath layers of mismatched comforters and quilts, including the motheaten paw-print monstrosity Sunny had insisted on bringing home from a thrift shop. It had survived multiple trips through the washing machine surprisingly well, and when the three of them crawled beneath it to watch a movie Hal sometimes caught Dave tracing the garish stitching with a lazy and weathered finger.

 

Sometimes it seemed unreal, that the three of them should be afforded any peace after the lives they had led. Dave and Sunny had surely earned it, working selflessly for a world that had seemed hell-bent on destroying them. But Hal? He was only trying to reverse some of the damage he’d caused in the first place.

 

Maybe there was more to it than that, and he knew better than to say such things in front of Dave who always looked at him as though he’d boldly declared the world was flat, or the sky was green, or that he didn’t understand what the big deal was anyway- they were just cartoons.

 

But these were not days to spend arguing, or even lost in self-deprecating introspection. They were meant for lazy hours spent on the porch as leaves, emboldened by the chilly winds, burst into color and fell. For blankets, for movie nights, for coffee and cocoa.

 

And the nights... they were meant for Hal to spend every last minute thanking whatever god was listening that the world hadn’t taken David from him. Not now. Not yet.

 

He came around the corner into the kitchen and set the dishes in the sink, smiling over at Sunny who was splitting her attention between installing a new operating system on the Mark II and committing every detail of their neighbor’s dog to her coloring page. She looked up as she saw him approach, and her smile only brightened as he nodded his approval at both.

 

“Time for a break,” he announced, and Sunny chirped happily as she crawled down from her chair, eager to spend time with the man she thought of as a father.

 

“Why don’t we take a walk, Sunny? It’s such a beautiful day.”

  



End file.
